Large-scale information processing systems (for example, parallel computers such as super computers and the like) that have been developed in recent years may include tens of thousands of computation nodes. In an information processing system, in preparation for a trouble that may occur, a mechanism for steadily monitoring operations is provided. However, in the case of this kind of large-scale information processing system, communication load that occurs due to an exchange of monitoring information and load for monitoring processing at each computation node become too large to ignore.
In one technique, in order to disperse this kind of load for monitoring processing, computation nodes are divided into plural node groups, and management nodes assigned to each computation node group are hierarchized. More specifically, a management node in the bottom layer monitors a computation node group, and a management node in a layer other than the bottom layer (in other words, a management node in a layer above the bottom layer) monitors management nodes in a layer immediately below the layer. In this technique, it is possible to know an amount of computation by computation nodes for each management node in the bottom layer.
Incidentally, a large-scale information processing system such as described above is not only used as a single information processing system, but may also be divided into partitions and used by plural users (for example, company, department, or the like).
When dividing an information processing system into plural partitions, optimizing arrangement of management nodes according to the partitions after division is desirable. However, there may be a difference in processing capability of the computation nodes. In the conventional technique described above, an amount of computation by computation nodes is known for each management node in the bottom layer. Therefore, when simply rearranging the management nodes, processing begins from selecting the computation nodes that each of the management nodes in the bottom layer will manage. The number of computation nodes may be tens of thousands or more, so this processing will take a very long time.
In other words, there is no conventional technique for rearranging management nodes easily when dividing a information processing system into partitions.